There is always a lull
in the afternoon, and when a patient cancels you have no choice but to face the
paperwork. Sally stared at the pile on her desk. Having a patient meant work; not
having a patient meant menial work. She leant back and was drawn to the small
dark wooden frog that sat on the window sill. It had been carved by familiar
hands
***
It was six months ago
that Jose walked into Sally's office. She remembers it was a Friday because
they were supposed to visit her sister in Maine for the long weekend but their
dog Buck was hit by a car. Sally and her husband Mark spent the Thursday night consoling
their two little girls and debating whether they could travel. She was flustered
when she got into the office. He walked in sheepishly. When she asked him if
his name was Jose, he smiled and nodded and took off his coat.
He was around fifty
years old and everything about him was stocky; he had the shoulders and back of
a retired boxer, and his waist, though broad, was not marred by a paunch. His
face was open and often-graced by an irrepressible smile, and a shock of long
grey hair that ran to his shoulders was ponytailed at the neck by a thin black
band. He was handsome, with small lively, intelligent eyes and a high forehead.
What were most
remarkable about him, though, were his hands. They were thick and flat and
looked heavy, like battered leather mitts, and when he rubbed them together by
habit they scraped. The fingers were squat too, the nails like square tabs of
flint, split here and there on the tips. Sally knew those hands. Her grandfather had the same hands.
She asked him how long
he had been a carpenter. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. Thirty-two years,
he said. She told him her grandfather had been a carpenter.
Jose told her that he
was also a sculptor. He lived until he was twenty in Puerto Rico. His father
taught him when he was a boy how to carve wood. Jose told her that he could
sculpt full time when the demand for his work was high enough. He made only
custom pieces, and he worked only with mahogany. When demand was low he would
work contracts, but that was dirty work, he said. The same thing, again and
again. It is not good for the spirit. He pointed to his heart.
When she asked him
what the problem was, though she had already seen his chart, he turned over his
right hand, palm facing up to show her. A stark pinkwhite line ran from the base
of his thumb up to the tip near the nail and down again on the other side to
the base of his index finger. It snaked as it went and curved on the thumb
where the flesh must have lifted from the bone.
Normally, he said, I never wear a glove. A glove is not a
necessary thing for me. But this one time. He shrugged. One in a million, no? I
wear a glove when I am cutting a board at the college. And the glove it catches
at the end, and fizz. He made a motion with his right hand, jolting it
forward and pulling it back into his left which cradled it. He smiled. My wife
she drive me to the emergency room. Three hours we sit there. And when the doctor see me he tell me they'll stitch me and to come back early
tomorrow. My wife she told him no, and when the surgeon see us he tell us the
tendon is, how do you say, severed? And that surgery is required and the other doctor
did not know what he was talking about. And a few months later when I am at
work, again it goes. He opened his left hand sharply to imitate the popping of
the tendon. It just goes. So I have another surgery and now...now I do not know.
He shrugged again.
Throughout the telling
he spoke sadly, though he smiled at the worst parts. Sally was used to wry
smiles and sardonic accounts of injuries, but the way Jose told his story, so
simply and without bitterness, and the familiar hands, endeared him to her. He smiled
out of humility, or with the conviction that he’d be fine soon enough. She said
how angry he must be. He shook his head and told her that so long as there were
good people to help and he had insurance he could not complain. There was
something fatalistic in the way he spoke and shrugged.
Sally had him on heat
and started to passively move the thumb. It was swollen slightly and his range
of motion was poor; the thumb would barely budge even when she forced it. She
was often sworn at by her patients as she did this, but Jose sat there quietly,
and occasionally screwed up his eyes and grimaced to cope with the pain.
Over the next six weeks
Jose made slight but significant progress. Sally had him almost able to grip a
can, and the swelling was close to gone. She heard more of his story; how he
and his wife Maria had moved from San Juan in the eighties to settle in
Vermont, and how she had had to retake classes to be ‘qualified’ to be a
teacher’s assistant. He had carved and sculpted to put her through college. She
helped teach Kindergarten at a nearby state school, where their youngest son
went. They had two sons and the oldest was in high school.
It is
important for him to have more education than his father got, he said to her.
She smiled at him politely. He was quiet serious.
On the day of his
seventh session he came early and apologized. Maria has been let go by the
school, he told her. He stood in the doorway with his coat still on.
How awful, Sally said.
Oh Jose I’m so sorry. She sat quietly, looking up at him sympathetically,
waiting for him to sit.
I just come to tell you
in person, he said.
You’re not going to
continue therapy, she asked?
I was on her insurance,
he said.
We have a sliding scale
here, you know. I think you only need ten sessions or so.
Yes, he said. He
shrugged and smiled. I got an offer with a contractor. I can almost hold a
screwdriver now. He raised his right hand and waved it like a baseball mitt in
front of his grinning face.
He shrugged again, his
smile fading. We need the money. If anything happens.
Sally smiled and stood.
She put out her left hand to shake his. He instead put out his right hand with
the bright scar and took hers in his. He smiled and turned and left.
***
Sally told her husband
Mark about it that night, and the night after. She felt terrible about the
whole thing, about how such a kind man who creates for a living cannot afford
the treatment to restore him his gift. How he has to take base work that is
soulless. Mark did not argue with her; he knew far better than that.
Jose and Maria were not
difficult to track down. Sally remembered the name of the school Maria had
worked for. The school, in an effort to avoid controversy, had preserved on
their website Maria’s name and the names of the other assistants who had been
let go to stave the budget cuts. She was surprised to find that they too stayed
in Woodberry.
Once a week on her way
home from the hospital Sally would drive to their house. She used equipment she
took home from her office, and improvised when necessary; she used her
daughter’s play-dough for motor skills and a fistful of rice in one of Mark’s
old socks as a makeshift ball. The smell of burnt rice was well masked
though by the sweet smell of the alto grande that Maria brewed for them. They
were both so kind, Sally remembered. Pro
Bono was not a term that Jose understood too well, but the relationship
between two artisans well trained and skilled in their trades was. It took them
more than ten sessions, but when his thumb was mended and he could work, he and
his wife thanked her to no end. He would make it up to her, he said. He would
make her something to thank her.
***
Sally opened her eyes.
The polished frog sat staring at her. No matter what mood she was in, it never
seemed mocking; it always calmed her. Another like it sat in their daughters’
bedroom; a small carved retriever with ‘Buck’ etched into the base. They were
beautiful pieces, carved by familiar hands. Hands which use only mahogany.
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